__ Deductible Junkets __
__ The Genetic Program __
Palo Alto is no Manhattan. It's no chic metropolis. But as suburbs go, it's not bad. Although the city was named after a tree on the banks of San Francisquito Creek (Palo Alto means "tall stick" in Spanish), it owes more of its modern existence to Stanford University and nearby Silicon Valley.
To get the lay of the land, walk the Dish, a 3.5-mile loop in the foothills behind Stanford. From the ridge you can view the entire SF Bay area from Candlestick Park down to San Jose. A quarky wrinkle in the hills west of campus is the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Make a reservation to tour this particle physics facility, view the two-mile-long accelerator, and spot the white-coated researchers in search of the elusive B particle.
If you're in search of breakfast, the blueberry coffee cake and hot spiced tea at Hobee's can't be beat; neither can a morning café au lait at Caffe Verona (though the wait staff often gets up on the wrong side of le lit). Meanwhile, the all-American Peninsula Fountain and Grill serves perfect potato pancakes and heavenly milkshakes. Marc Andreessen has been a regular here since his start-up days. And it seems Kirk's has been serving burgers forever. We recommend the steak burger with all the trimmings. Between afternoon sessions of neural nets, get your juices flowing with a protein powder or ginseng smoothie at the Juice Club.
Wind down your day with an evening stroll through the Farm, as the sprawling Stanford campus is known. Ponder cellular encoding next to The Thinker in the Rodin Sculpture Garden, and then wander into the Quad for a view of Memorial Church.
Chow down at Jing Jing, a dependable dive known for its hot and spicy dishes. You can cool your taste buds with a pint of the Märzen at Gordon Biersch. For haute Chinese, drive (or stretch your legs on the 20-minute walk) down El Camino to Su Hong in Menlo Park the General's Chicken dish would put a smile on Mao's mug, but so would the thick crust Nice pizza (ricotta, spinach, tomatoes, and onions) across the street at Applewood. Genetic night owls can browse the stacks at Kepler's Books and Magazines next door or opt for a frosted mocha at Cafe Borrone both spots are open until midnight on weekends.
Back in Palo Alto, the Blue Chalk Cafe draws a lively, loafered crowd with its garlic mashed potatoes and shuffleboard tables (though you'll get more pool balls for your buck at Q). The funkier Left at Albuquerque is a nouveau Southwestern place owned by the Chalk people. You can avoid the yuppie trendsetters by cruising to St. Michael's Alley, a venerable club that has staged the folky likes of Joan Baez and The Grateful Dead.
Whatever you do, don't leave town without stopping by The Scientific Revolution, a toy store infused with the playful spirit of scientific research because Palo Alto really is a mecca of science, a cultural melting pot of academia and techdom where the IQs are as high as the real estate values.
- Jessie Scanlon *
__ The Current Roundup (see Wired 4.05) __
June 16-20 Society and the Future of Computing '96; Snowbird, Utah. June 17-19 @d:tech.96; New Orleans. € June 23-26 Global Superprojects Conference; San Francisco. € June 25-28 INET '96: The Internet: Transforming our Society Now; Montreal. € July 11-13 Vision Plus 2; Schwarzenberg, Austria.
July 14-18 FutureVision: Ideas, Insights, and Strategies; Washington, DC What does the future hold? More than 600 writers, thinkers, and politicians will opine on the biosphere, the technosphere, the econosphere, the politicosphere, and, of course, the future. Special events include the Forecasting Forum and meet-the-author sessions. Registration: US$345 through May 31, $375 through June 28, $395 on site. Contact: (800) 989 8274, +1 (301) 656 8274, fax +1 (301) 951 0394.
July 26-28 DEF CON IV; Las Vegas Sessions will uncover encryption, virii, the problems with packet sniffing, privacy threats, and other questions sure to pique a hacker's curiosity. The lighter side of this darkside event includes games of Hacker Jeopardy and capture the flag (played on an internal network of common operating systems). Registration: US$40. Contact: email: dtangent@defcon.org, on the Web at www.defcon.org.
July 28-30 Spotlight; Laguna Niguel, California The program for Denise Caruso's interactive media conference promises high-level discussion and dissection of the most important issues in the overlapping software, telecom, entertainment, and publishing industries. And apparently it delivers most of the senior suits that attended the début event last year will return to hear speakers like Starwave's Mike Slade and Time Warner's Norman Pearlstine. Registration: US$1,795 through July 5, $2,295 after. Contact: (800) 633 4312, +1 (415) 312 0545, fax +1 (415) 286 2750.
__July 28-31 __ Genetic Programming 1996 Conference; Stanford, California It's amazing what these folks can do with a primordial ooze of thousands of randomly created computer programs. Genetic algorithms. Neural nets. Get the dish at this conference co-sponsored by the ACM, the IEEE, and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Registration: US$415 postmarked by May 15, $465 by June 26, $515 on site; students $215, $265, and $315 respectively. Contact: +1 (415) 328 3123, email: gp@aaai.org.
August 4-9 Siggraph 96; New Orleans This annual computer graphics event is well known for its mind-bending networked environments. But don't miss the new Animator Sketches, a presentation of obscure and/or unfinished works, outtakes and bloopers, and visionary manifestos. Registration: US$935 through June 28, $1,175 after; students $395 and $495 respectively. Contact: +1 (312) 321 6830, email: siggraph96@siggraph.org, on the Web at www.siggraph.org/conferences/siggraph96
__August 8-10 __ ONE ISPCON; San Francisco Formerly known as ONE BBSCON, this conference is the annual gathering of engineers, programmers, and networkers. PC columnist John Dvorak will keynote, David Chaum will speak on electronic cash, and the air will be abuzz with talk of the ether. Registration: US$295 through May 1, $425 through July 15, $595 after; $25 exhibit pass. Contact: +1 (303) 693 5253, fax +1 (303) 693 5518, email: info@one.ispcon.com, on the Web at www.one.ispcon.com.
Out on the Range:
August 19-21 Surveillance Expo '96; Mclean, Virginia. Contact: +1 (703) 450 2200, on the Web at www.rosseng.com/expo.html. September 2-7 Ars Electronica Festival; Linz, Austria. Contact: +43 (0) 732 712121, email: info@aec.at.
Got a good junket? E-mail junkets@wired.com.
Thanks to the HotWomen Marla Aufmuth and June Cohen, biz-girl Courtney Kingston, and Jeanne Aufmuth.
